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We spend so much of life waiting.
Waiting for the crisis to pass, the family problem to resolve, the world to become less frightening, the sea to become calm—and then, we tell ourselves, we will become the people we were meant to be.
But what if we have it exactly backwards?
What if the storm is not merely interrupting our life, but forming us?
A calm sea never made a great sailor. There are strengths we discover only when we need strength, courage we discover only when we have something to fear, and depths of faith that emerge only when we cannot see what comes next.
Nearly 2,700 years ago, when Isaiah was still an unknown young man, he stood at precisely such a moment.
His world was unstable, his nation was in crisis, and he himself felt inadequate. Yet when G-d asked, “Whom shall I send?” Isaiah answered: Hineni. Here I am.
Those two words become the key to three great battles we still fight today: stop waiting for life to get easier; stop believing that everyone else must change first; and stop imagining that one ordinary person cannot possibly matter.
Through humor, unforgettable stories, and the remarkable true story of Morris Cohen—whose decision to help a stranger in a Canadian restaurant would echo decades later into one of the decisive moments of Jewish history—the sermon explores a fundamental Jewish truth:
No mitzvah ends where it begins.
We know where an act of goodness starts. We have no idea where G-d may allow it to end.
And beneath it all lies Isaiah’s extraordinary vision.
King Uzziah was dead. The earthly throne was empty. Everything that had seemed secure was suddenly uncertain.
Yet Isaiah looked higher and saw that another throne was not empty.
There is a throne above the throne.
Our lives are not accidents, our struggles are not meaningless, and the moment in which G-d has placed us may be the very moment that needs us.
Rosh Hashanah therefore asks us not only what we want from G-d in the coming year, but what G-d may be asking from us:
Hineni. Here I am.
Shlacheni. Send me.
